Aftermath

window and surveyed the little of the landscape he could make out through the steadily increasing late-evening gloom. About fifty meters ahead was the outline of a lone house, and before the light had all but disappeared he’d seen that the front door had been left open invitingly. There were only two bodies that he could see between him and the house, and as far as he could tell, neither of them yet knew he was there.
    Driver took a deep breath and carefully eased his unfit bulk down onto the road. He reached back up to grab his duffel bag and the golf club, then ran like hell. In his navy days he wouldn’t even have broken a sweat covering a distance as short as this, but he was no longer in such good shape and the rigors of life since the end of the world—a poor diet and next to no exercise—definitely hadn’t helped. Already panting, and barely halfway there, he swung the golf putter around and caved in the side of the first corpse’s skull, leaving a neat rectangular indentation which perfectly matched the head of the club. The corpse immediately collapsed at his feet as if he’d flicked an off switch, barely managing an untidy half-pirouette before it hit the deck, all arms and legs. Desperately wishing he was in better condition, Driver half-ducked, half-fell out of the way of the second creature as it made an uncoordinated grab for him. Picking himself up, he scrambled into the house and kicked the door shut. The remaining body was outside almost immediately, banging on the door. He knew he had to move fast before the noise brought countless others to the house.
    There’s something in here with me .
    Before he’d even realized it was there, Driver caught the pint-sized cadaver of a small boy as it leaped up at him, holding onto it by the arm of its crusty, bloodstained sweater. Its arms and legs thrashed wildly as he shoved it into a cupboard in the corner of the kitchen, then wedged the back of a chair under the handle to stop the damn thing from getting out. Great—two of them filling the house with noise now. Why did there have to be so bloody many of them? As he made a mad thirty-second dash around the kitchen to check for food and other useful items, he realized the noise might actually help if he could get away from here without the dead realizing he’d gone. He paused by a side door and looked out. Another building about a hundred meters away, maybe a hundred and fifty. It looked like a used-car sales place. If he could get there without any of them noticing, he might still have a chance.
    Several more corpses stumbled toward the house as Driver slipped out and ran toward the car lot for all he was worth.
    *   *   *
     
    He’d done eight or nine of these stop-start sprints to safety, and he was exhausted. The mad dashes were getting harder and the breath-catching gaps between them longer. It would be completely dark soon. Time to find somewhere to rest.
    By the time he reached a shacklike roadside café, which appeared to be constructed almost entirely from sheets of corrugated metal nailed to a creaking wooden frame, he was doubled-over with effort. He let himself in and to his immense relief, as he didn’t have the energy to fight again tonight, he found he was alone. He sat at a rickety table, swigging from his last bottle of water and looking out through the cobweb-covered window like any diner might. After the frantic, frightening events of the last days, this moment of silence and calm was both unexpected and blissful. And then, in this snatched moment of almost-normality, the enormity of recent events finally caught up with him. He wept openly, both for himself and for those he’d left behind, and again he struggled with his conscience, feeling a very real need to double-back to try and help the others. But he knew it wouldn’t do them any good. Even if he made it back to the hotel, the seething crowds surrounding the building would make any attempt at rescue nigh on impossible. This was the very worst time to try and go back.
    A lone female corpse stumbled in the road outside the café, its awkward, staccato movements illuminated by moonlight. The dead woman’s shredded blouse rippled in the gentle wind, and the soft blue light on her ice-white skin gave her an unsettling, almost ghostlike appearance. She dropped heavily to her knees, and Driver watched as she awkwardly picked herself up again and carried on. Her tattered skirt was now just a strip of rag caught around